1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to chiral lactones, methods of making the lactones and methods of use thereof.
2. Description of the Background
In our own work (ref. 1), we have extensively demonstrated that (5S,6R)- and (5R,6S)-4-Cbz and t-Boc-5,6-diphenyl-2,3,5,6-tetrahydro-4H-1,4-oxazin 2-ones (1a and 1b, FIG. 1) are useful as chiral, nonracemic glycine templates for the synthesis of structurally diverse α-amino acids. The compounds (2a and 2b, FIG. 2), in which Cbz- or t-Boc-protected NH is substituted for an oxygen atom, would be useful to synthesize various chiral α-hydroxy acids, however, no synthesis has been reported so far. Though there are papers which describes glycolate Aldol reaction of trans-diphenyl lactones (3a and 3b) (see ref. 2), diastereoselectivity is not necessarily high and no other application such as alkylation has been reported. Thus, there remains a need for a synthetic procedure to obtain novel lactones as chiral building blocks for the synthesis of various α-hydroxy acids and 1,2-diols.